1. Fine Motor Development: Tips from an Occupational Therapist
What is Occupational Therapy (OT)?
Pre-Writing Skills
In preschool, children develop skills known as “pre-writing skills”. These are an important foundation for skills they will develop later in school, such as writing the alphabet.
Some pre-writing skills include:
Hand and Finger Strength
Bilateral Integration (using both hands for activities like cutting, writing, and stringing beads)
Pencil Grasp
Upper Body Strength
Visual Perception
Learning Pre-Writing Strokes
Keep reading for activity ideas for each pre-writing skill!
OTs help students participate in their classroom and school environments. This can include building fine motor skills, such as cutting and writing, adapting or changing an activity based on a student’s needs, working with teachers to build skills in the classroom, addressing sensory, cognitive or motor needs, helping students engage in play activities, and increasing independence in daily living skills.
Keep reading for tips of how you can help your child build fine motor skills at home!
Pre-Writing Skill #1: Hand & Finger Strength
Play dough: Encourage your child to imitate you rolling, squishing, and pulling the play dough. Use tools like cookie cutters or rolling pins that require your child to use both hands
Tearing paper
Cutting with scissors (have your child cut playdough or cardstock to make it more challenging)
Squeezing a wet sponge out during water play
Melissa Willoughby, OTR/L address: Williams Early Childhood Center

2. Pre-Writing Skill #4: Core Strength
Pre-Writing Skill #2: Bilateral Integration
Bilateral integration means using both hands. We use this skill to hold our paper still with one hand while we write and cut with the other hand!
Remind your child to use their “helper hand” to hold their paper while their “worker hand” cuts or writes
Opening containers during a cooking activity
Stringing beads
Have your child try to zip their own jacket, button their pants, etc.
Pre-Writing Skill #3: Pencil Grasp
We want to work toward a “functional” grasp for kids to use when writing. This may involve 3 or 4 fingers on the pencil, known as a “tripod” (3) or ”quadrupod” (4-finger) grasp. The following activities can help your child develop a more mature pencil grasp:
Threading beads on pipe cleaners or lace
Practice pinching and pulling playdough with thumb, index, and middle fingers
Use Q-tips for painting
Use broken crayons for coloring (bonus: have your child break crayons in half to promote hand and finger strength!
Practice picking up small objects and moving them with tweezer or tongs
Pre-Writing Skill #4: Core Strength
It is important to have strength in your larger muscles (abs, shoulder, etc.) in order to have stability when doing fine motor activities with small muscles (fingers and wrist). To help your child develop strength in their “core”:
Yoga (Cosmic Kids Yoga is available online at videos can be viewed for free! Super Stretch is a free app that can be downloaded on a phone or tablet. For more information, check out
Try animal walks with your child; walk like a crab, crawl like a bear, jump like a frog. The possibilities are endless!
Paint, draw, or color on a vertical surface (for example, tape a coloring page to an easel or the wall)
Draw or color while laying on tummy this activates muscles of the back for developing good posture
Encourage lots of ”outside time”!
Encourage your child to put feet flat on the floor and sit up straight during table top activities to promote good posture!

3. Bonus: A note about scissor skills! -Dawn Iantero
Pre-Writing Skill #5: Visual Perception Skills
Visual perception is a child’s ability to take in information from “seeing” and have the brain interpret it to give it meaning.
Activities that encourage visual perception skills:
Puzzles
Shape sorters
Sorting objects by color or shape
Playing “I Spy”
Try highlighting the outside of shapes for coloring and cutting in the lines
Pre-Writing Skill #6: Learning “Pre-Writing” Strokes
Above are shapes that children need to learn because they make up letters (for example, a “d” is a line down and a circle put together)
Try creating “pre-writing” strokes with your child in different materials (i.e. in playdough, finger paint, shaving cream, etc.)
Give them a cue as you make each shape for example “line down”, “circle, stop”
Bonus: A note about scissor skills!
In order to develop scissors skills, children need a lot of (SUPERVISED) practice 
Try cutting different materials, such as play dough, coupons, junk mail, cardstock, paper, paint chips, snip straws, etc.
Encourage your child to hold scissors correctly by reminding them to use “thumbs up” while cutting. You can also glue googly eyes on top of the scissors or wrap the top part of the scissors in bright tape to remind them which part of the scissors should face up
Practice with salad tongs and tweezers to get down the “open/close” motion required for cutting
First, kids will snip at paper, then move to cutting across paper, then cutting on a line, and eventually work toward cutting shapes
Remember, to always monitor your child for safety when using scissors!
Remember to have fun and choose a few activities that you can do with your child. They will be excited to try if you are!
“Time spent playing with children is never wasted.”
-Dawn Iantero